


Death Doesn't Mean Freedom

by LuddleBubble



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Klaus gets 'special' training, i updated this and fixed the spacing, really he just gets more reasons to do drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 00:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuddleBubble/pseuds/LuddleBubble
Summary: Klaus gets another 'special' training session, which means he is yet again locked in a room with the dead screaming at him. But this time he has to solve a puzzle before he can get out. The poor baby needs a hug.





	Death Doesn't Mean Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt based- "We're not free. We never were."
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings- Angst. Ghosts aren't very helpful. Reginald is a terrible father and rather absent-mindedly abusive. Graphic descriptions of murders and gore. Klaus's telekinetic powers show up a little, but he's too scared to realize he did it.

The darkness of the room just melted into his brain. That's all it did. He just felt the chill of the room breath into his bones and freeze them from the inside to the outside. His teeth were chattering, causing him to pull the bed sheets tighter around his body. The bed was so cold, so the best idea was to move to the stone corner and bundled himself up in the thin white sheets. Besides, he couldn't bare to look around the room. He kept his head down and tilted to the corner the two walls met at. People were standing in the room, shouting curses and screaming at him.

 

They called Klaus by name and threw things at him. Those things never hit him- they never came close to hitting him- instead they bounced loudly off the walls many feet from his curled up body. Tears were rushing from his eyes, freezing on his blood red cheeks, and making his eyes burn painfully. He had been screaming, for a long time, but his throat was raspy and he was sure he'd never be able to talk again. He had drug his fingers up and down the metal door, feeling the metal screech loudly in the silent room. He'd broken the tips of his nails off and split some of them down the middle. His fingers throbbed like flares- from the cold and the pain.

 

His dad had put him down there again. No, it wasn't the mausoleum this time, but Klaus almost wished it was. It was warmer in there and he'd never been expected to sleep in there. Dad wanted him to solve a puzzle, a mystery that he needed the ghosts and spirits here to give him so he could escape. Klaus was supposed to talk to them, spend time with them, and get them to lead him to the answer of Reginald's question. He was expected to spend as much time in here as needed, hence the bed and the bucket in the opposite corner.The only problem was the ghosts and spirits here were so angry and violent. They were closer to demons than they were Casper the friendly neighborhood ghost. These ghosts made Beetlejuice seem tame and like the golden boy Reginald so wished Klaus could be. So far, he'd only been told the same riddle on repeat. It's answer kept evading him, since his fear was too strong and he couldn't focus.

 

Klaus had gotten the question from his new cold companions. He'd gotten it hours ago, but he hadn't solved the puzzle that was supposed to get him out of here. He was in a giant open room, with a bed, and a plethora of coffins scattered around the room. This was the worst Escape Room that Klaus had never wished for.

 

"Look at me! Look at what they did to me! LOOK AT ME!" A woman was screaming louder than the others. Klaus knew which one it was. It was the woman without a face. Blood and muscles were all that remained on her skull. Her face had been skinned, causing her eyes to stick out farther than they should have and her rotten teeth to glare viciously at Klaus. Klaus kept his eyes shut tightly, not wanting to see her face ever again. He'd seen her when she'd first appeared, before he'd curled up in the corner and begun to cry. She'd been brutally murdered back in the Roaring 20s and left here to rot until she was found in the late 50s. Klaus had never been more thankful he couldn't smell the dead.

 

"Go away! Get away from me!" Klaus screamed as loud as he could, but it barely reached their ears. He was sure the cameras in the corners of the room couldn't have heard him either. His father probably only saw his mouth move while he sat in his chair, glaring disappointedly at the monitors in front of him. He was probably debating on leaving Klaus there forever.

 

Klaus's eyes, much to his own heartbreak- snapped open when a chunk of concrete smashed into the wall by his head and caused chunks to rain onto his safety blanket. He saw the dozen of angry spirits- monsters- and his eyes couldn't close again. They were all too close, too angry, too loud, and worst of all- too real. Klaus wished more than anything for this to stop. For all of this to go away, the ghosts, the training, the dank places he was always put in, and most of all- his powers. He would do anything to make it stop- to make it all go away.

 

The question started again. The spirits all started speaking in unison. A dozen dead eyes were staring at him, 11 mouths were moving in sync. The 12th mouth was just a tongue hanging out of the top of a throat and the top half of a jaw hanging over it like a cliff. Bile rose in Klaus's throat, but he knew puking would just make this whole situation worse. Klaus listened to the puzzle again.

 

"Whoever makes it, tells it not.

Whoever takes it, knows it not.

Whoever knows it, wants it not."

 

"This doesn't make any sense! I want to go home... I want to go home..." Klaus whimpered again, the chattering of his teeth forcing his mouth open. His hands were numb from the cold, his nose beginning to run with snot now. He hated this so much.

 

"You're going to die here. You'll be here forever. Curled up in your little corner."

 

Klaus whimpered again. He buried his face between his knees and sobbed, his chest exploding with the sudden and intense movement. He screamed, his voice coming back and the ghosts flickered out of the corner of his eye.

 

Think. Think, Klaus. Dad makes you do riddles all the time. The answer is always hard to get, but you always get it eventually. Klaus repeated his words in his head. The ghosts evened themselves back out, causing the flickering to go away with Klaus's screaming.

 

Klaus looked up and stared them down, still unable to blink while looking at them. Tears were running down his face, but only occasionally now.

 

"A coffin. The answer is a coffin."

 

The spirits got quiet, only soft murmuring could be heard. Klaus laughed in awe. He'd gotten it. He'd figured it out. Klaus waited for the door to open or for the ghosts to disappear, but nothing happened. The terrified kid stopped crying and wiped his eyes. Why wasn't anyone coming to get him yet? The door was still locked and he knew that Pogo was on the other side, waiting for his boss's que to open the door up for the Fourth child of the Umbrella Academy.

 

Much to Klaus's horror- speaking of which, he missed Ben- the ghouls raised their gnarled and fat fingers to point in the direction of the coffins. Number Four's bottom lipped quivered tremendously. The cacophony of the dead started up again and Klaus couldn't moved once more. He needed to go to the coffins? Maybe there was a key in one of them and that's why Pogo hadn't unlocked the door yet- because Klaus had to do that.

 

That only left one problem then. Klaus's limbs were locked up and he couldn't move a muscle. It was the fear, it was the screaming of the dead that his eyes were locked on, that kept him from moving an inch.

 

"Help me! They're killing me! Help! HELP ME!" A little boy- he couldn't have been much older than Klaus and his siblings- was screaming at Klaus. He had no wounds, no visible reason for his death. But he was dead, Klaus could feel it in his chest. Another clue he was dead was the neon blue light that surrounded his body like a force-field. "They'll kill you too!"

 

Klaus had never seen anything like what just happened- the blue light or anything else that happened. The boy had appeared from behind the twelve spirits and had begun screaming. As soon as his warning to Klaus left his mouth, a neat and straight line appeared across his throat and his shoulder's slumped. The boy's head slipped from his shoulders and bounced against the freezing concrete floor. The head rolled to Klaus's feet, stopping at the 12 year old's feet and staring into his soul. The boy's brown eyes were opened and staring at the cowering boy. The head and body disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke.

 

Bile rose in Klaus's throat and fear gripped him tightly. The room was no longer cold to him- it was burning up and he was too. His panic rose quickly, even though his brain hadn't processed what had just happened. Klaus found his voice and began to scream like he'd never screamed before. The ghosts flickered in and out- like Klaus was affecting them. Klaus found his legs and bolted up, making a b-line for the coffins that sat abandoned on the floor.

 

Finding a strength he didn't know he could muster- Klaus slid the top of the first coffin off and let the wooden surface clatter to the floor. A rotting smell slapped him painfully in the face and he stumbled backwards. One of the ghost's bodies was laying in the coffin, rotting and breaking down. But, curled under one arm was a box of matches. Klaus's shaking fingers curled around the matches and pulled them to his chest. What was he supposed to do with these?

 

"Save us! SAVE US!"

 

"Kill us! KILL US!"

 

"Shut up! Stop talking! I want to go home... I want to go home!" Klaus sobbed the words out, pushing his hands against his ears. They were so loud, screaming nonsense in his ears, begging for impossible things. They were already dead, Klaus couldn't save them now. They were already dead, someone had already killed them before they'd asked Klaus. Why were they screaming such things?

 

Klaus looked at the matches in his hands. It was dark, but there were lanterns sitting in around the room. At least Dad had cared enough to give Klaus some light. They were probably only there so Reginald could see the situation well on the cameras. Klaus ran his thumb over the price-sticker on the small object. It was 99 cents and the store just a few blocks down from the Academy had its logo on the brown cover. The store wasn't old, so that meant the matches must have been bought recently. Which meant they were part of another puzzle. Klaus screamed again- frustration taking over.

 

In one loud movement and an explosion of blue light- the wooden tops on all of the coffins were slung off and all the dead bodies were revealed. Some bright colors peeked out of the coffins, a drastic contrast on the grey and black dressings covering the dead bodies. Klaus- not taking a moment to think about the weird anomaly that caused the coffins to open simultaneously- rushed around and grabbed the objects placed there for him.

 

A few cans of gasoline and a box of matches. So he was supposed to burn the corpses? That made a little bit of sense. Reginald had told him during one of their training sessions that required books that some spirits were bound to their bodies and imprisoned to relive their deaths. That would have explained why that boy had glowed blue and relived his death in gruesome details- but the blue light still had no reasoning there. Had it come from the little boy's ghost?

 

Klaus got busy with drenching the wooden death boxes with gasoline. The whole room smelled terrible now- way worse than when it was just rotting corpses. Klaus's stomach reeled violently and he felt light headed. He had the coffins connected with rivers of gasoline and the straw that was in some of the boxes. The ghosts were screaming now- making Klaus grab his ears once again. He fumbled with the box of matches, dropping them in a small pool of gas. He gasped and quickly shook the liquid off before poking it open and grabbing a match between his thumb and forefinger. Soon enough, a little flame was shining in front of his eyes and the ghouls were a screaming mess.

 

They were louder than they had ever been before. Louder than the mausoleum, louder than when Klaus broke his jaw and wasn't able to talk back to them. Their screams rang in his ears, causing his entire head to hurt and his ears to throb. He wouldn't be surprised if his ears were bleeding. Klaus dropped the match into the nearest pool of gasoline. It was like a slow motion string of dominos. The fire spread beautifully, covering thirteen coffins like a blanket being put over a shivering toddler. For the first time in three hours or so, Klaus truly stopped shivering and shaking.

 

The spirits were quiet. Klaus could have heard a pin drop if it wasn't for the crackling of the flames. They all stood silently, staring at the kid in front of them. Their eyes- the ones who had them- were cold and hollow. For some reason, they reminded him of Reginald.

 

"Go on! Get out of here! You're free now!" Klaus shouted. Tears were beginning to pool in his eyes again, and not just from the heat around him. Had he messed up? Had he gotten it wrong and was now stuck in here with a fire? He would suffocate to death. A new found fear scratched his chest and grabbed his throat. He would die in here.

 

"We're not free. We never were." A dead looking lady in a pretty Sunday dress spoke from the middle. With those words, she held out a small key. Klaus stared at it dangling from her fingers. An angry red light circled the spirits and wrapped them up. They disappeared, leaving ashes to fall in the places they stood. In the silence, Klaus heard the metal key clang nosily against the concrete. The roaring of the fire is what brought him back. He scooped the key up, his warm fingers brushed the freezing concrete as he grabbed it. Before he could realize what he was doing, he was unlocking the door and gripping the handle and tearing the door open.

 

Just like he'd said earlier, Pogo was standing on the other side of the door. He gripped his cane in his hands and smiled sadly at Number Four. Reginald was standing in front of Pogo, waiting for his greatest disappointment. He clicked his a button of the side of his stop-watch and sighed disapprovingly at the young boy.

 

"Unacceptable, Number Four. Eleven hours and seventeen minutes. Unacceptable." Reginald looked through his monocle and down his nose at Klaus. Shame wrapped around Klaus's insides. Which quickly turned to disbelief. He'd been in there for over eleven hours? He could have sworn it was only long enough to be three.

 

"You still have not overcome your fear of the dead. Which means your training must continue another day. The only thing I've been able to take away from this failed experiment, is that you can manifest the cause of death with spirits. We will look into this." There was a terrifying glint in Sir Reginald Hargreeves's eyes. Klaus felt more bile rise in his throat. His dad turned on his heel and left the two others.

 

"Come, Master Klaus. Breakfast will be served soon." Pogo wrapped a furry little hand around Klaus's wrist and gently led him along the halls and out of the abandoned basement. Klaus thought he was talking, but couldn't hear a word that was said. Klaus had been the reason he saw that boy's death? Klaus had made himself see that?

 

It was just the cherry on top of the powers he still didn't want. It was just another reason to try and find something to make this go away. Maybe he could get Allison to tell him a rumor that he was normal. Maybe he could find a way to trade Vanya his powers for her ordinariness. He'd gladly stand in a room playing the violin if that meant he never had to hear another ghost say his name or ask him to kill them. He was so tired of it and was determined to find a way to make it stop. But how could he ever achieve that?

 

Klaus sighed and let Pogo led him home.


End file.
